Dash turned to Lomas with a shrug of apology. “I’d rather not demonstrate, and that’s not our purpose.”
“That’s fine. In any case, we saw the aftermath of your battle against the Deepers. From the time our probe registered the first shots to the point where they were very thoroughly dead, was—”
“It was shockingly brief,” Abillart said.
“You guys were watching us fight?” Leira asked.
“Only indirectly,” Lomas replied. “You saw the remains of one of our patrols after they’d tangled with those Deeper ships you fought. We followed up with an automated probe to see what had happened to our people, and we just happened to catch your battle in the distance.”
“Your weapons produced electromagnetic and other signatures that are wholly unfamiliar,” Abillart said. “I was especially intrigued by neutrino cascades that—”
“We’ll get to talking about the specific technology eventually, I’m sure,” Lomas said. “Right now, I think we’re really just getting to know one another. And to that end”—Lomas began to gesture toward the stars—“we’re a confederation, loose but strong, of twenty systems given whether or not we’re all speaking to each other at any moment. You know how families can be.”
“Understood. Squabbles are part of governing. Life, really,” Dash said.
“Each Rimworld League system controls their own fate, except for matters of defense, security, and trade. We need each other, and frankly, we’re not strong enough to stand alone. Whatever cultural differences we have get glossed over in a hurry when the shooting starts.”
“Funny, that,” Leira said.
“You said it. We know when to dig in on a rate or loan or argument. We also know when to lock arms and point our guns in the same direction. Like now,” Lomas said. “Our records tell of this place, the Sagittarius Arm, being settled after a long trek around the core from the Orion Arm. Even with the best translation drives available, the progenitors of the League had been underway for at least a decade and, depending on what was meant by underway, as much as two. For them it was a one-way trip, and here we are. Up to our eyeballs in aliens and fighting for our lives.”
“Kind of makes you wonder who else might be out here,” Leira said. “I mean, I don’t think we have any records of your expedition at all. Isn’t that right, Tybalt?”
“It is,” Tybalt replied over the comm. “The Creators did not recognize or record it, for reasons only known to them. As for your species, you have passed through a number of chaotic periods, during which any number of expeditions could have been mounted.”
“That is actually an artificial intelligence speaking?” Abillart asked.
Leira nodded. “It is.”
“It is so . . . real. I could believe it is another human.”
“There is no need to be insulting,” Tybalt said, his tone a little petulant.
Laughter rang out over the table at that, and when it faded Dash thought of another group of humans they’d met—the Displaced, a furtive group of survivors hidden among the wreckage of another human confederacy, one located much closer to Old Earth. They’d been virtually wiped out by the Golden—which led Dash to his most burning question.
“So, we’ve told you about the Golden,” Dash said to Lomas. “I’ll be direct. Have you seen them?”
Lomas looked at Envaer, Abillart, and the other League personnel around the table and got nothing but blank stares. The term Golden clearly hadn’t hit home. “No, we haven’t,” Lomas finally said. “Nothing like what you’ve described, anyway. We did lose contact with everyone outside this arm of the galaxy about a hundred years ago—”
“Our last contact with the Prokina was one hundred and fifteen years ago, in fact,” Envaer said, earning an annoyed glance from Lomas.
“As I said, about a hundred years ago,” she went on. “Anyway, we’ve had no contact or interactions with any other part of the galaxy since then.”
“The Prokina were a race of spacefaring traders,” Abillart put in. “We assumed that they had simply moved on.”
“The Prokina are recognized by the Creators,” Sentinel said. “Or, rather, by those systems left in place by the Creators to monitor the situation in the Orion Arm. They record the destruction of the Prokina by the Golden at approximately that time.”
“Well, there you go,” Dash said, thinking of the archive of races that the Golden had managed to destroy, that had been revealed to him by the last surviving Unseen. “That gives you an idea of what the Golden are all about, in bright, terrible detail. So when that Black Gate opened up into a system that the Unseen had specifically engineered for humans in general, we thought they might be back.”
“And these Deepers of yours don’t seem to fit the Golden profile very well,” Leira said. “I mean, it could be them—”
“We don’t think so,” Envaer cut in. “As you described these Golden, I had our own AI—a pale imitation of yours, of course—to correlate that with what we know about the Deepers.” He gestured to a flatscreen he’d unrolled in front of him. “There is almost no commonality at all.”
“Tybalt and I would concur with that,” Sentinel said.
“Of course, the trouble is that we know so little about the Deepers to begin with,” Lomas went on. “We first encountered them only a year ago. We’re aware that their ships are capable of remarkable feats of self-repair, which makes them extremely difficult to kill. Needless to say, we’ve been working on solutions to that.”
“Without much success, unfortunately,” Abillart added.
“But several approaches that show considerable promise,” Envaer snapped.
Abillart looked away, cheeks flushed. “Of course.”
Dash exchanged a glance with Leira. The politics of this group were already pretty evident. But he turned back to Lomas.
“Is there anything else you can add about these Deepers? Are they the ones who made that Gate?”
“No idea. The Deepers are still pretty much a complete mystery to us. They scuttle their ships if it looks like they’re losing a battle—which, in our experience, isn’t that often. They seem to prefer to fight from long range. Their ships and tech seem to be at least partly organic. And that’s about it. That’s all we know.”
“Well, I know that they killed almost three hundred of my people, in an entirely unprovoked attack. So they may not be the Golden, but I intend to treat them as though they are, at least until they give me some sort of reason not to.”
Lomas looked squarely at Dash. “You said you utterly destroyed the Golden.”
He stared back, then answered without hesitation. “I did.”
“Well, I’m not going to object if you want to do the same to the Deepers,” Lomas said. “We’ve tried diplomacy, but the Deepers either don’t engage in it, or can’t. We lost one delegation, and another escaped by a hair.”
Dash nodded. “The Deepers may not be the Golden, but their purpose and style are close enough that I can’t see us ever being friends. At least, not in a sense that’s mutually beneficial to us. No, these are enemies.”